


Postcards

by psocoptera



Series: Road & Romance [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Curtain Fic, Multi, OT4, Polyamory, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 04:22:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4333705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlets and timestamps set in the storyverse of "Exeunt, Pursued By Heteronormativity".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. dinner parties

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have a plan in mind for how many of these I might write, and they won't be in any particular chronological or thematic order. I just still think about these versions of the characters in my head a fair bit and thought I might try writing some of it down occasionally. If there's something you'd really like to see, feel free to leave prompts in the comments - no promises, but if someone happens to be curious about one of the things I've thought about, I might as well try to write that one up.

Shitty is home for dinner.

Maybe he was at work last night until 3, and went back in at 7:30 this morning, and is heading back again after dinner and is thinking of trying to find one of the road trip sleeping bags in the basement to take with him, but here he is, eating Bitty's salmon at a table with all three of his people.

"I invited Robs and Marky over to dinner this weekend," Jack says, when Shitty winds down about work. Lardo sets down their glass, Shitty stops chewing mid-bite, Bitty actually freezes with his fork halfway to his lips.

"I, uh, bailed on them tonight," Jack says, "When Shitty said he'd be home. Will that be okay?"

"Of COURSE," Bitty says real big over Shitty and Lardo saying the same thing. "What should I make, or, wait, who do you want to be home?"

"You can make what you want?" Jack says. "And, uh, anyone who's home... should be home?"

Bitty beams. Shitty holds out his fist to Jack.

"What's this for," Jack says, bumping it automatically.

"You," Shitty says without elaboration. Lardo nods.

"Lasagna," Bitty is muttering. "Maybe the hazelnut torte... no, better no nuts..."

Shitty hopes he can finagle a second dinner away from the office so soon.


	2. cabinets

"Laardo," Shitty calls, banging open the front door, so excited he doesn't even take off his shoes. He runs up the stairs to Lardo's room. "Lardo, Lardo, Lar - you're not Lardo."

"Sorry," Jack says. He's on his knees, rummaging in one of the drawers of the zillion-drawer storage cabinet where Lardo keeps what they call "ingredients", bits of trash and strange little objects for use in assemblage pieces. Shitty makes a quick check to make sure Jack isn't holding broken glass or rusty nails or any of the other hazardous contents, and then flings himself at him.

"Jack," he says, "Jack Jack Jack! I didn't know you were coming home, I thought you were all, team, and then straight to the airport."

"I'm not home," Jack says, "Lardo thought they had rubber tubing, but I can't find it."

"Kinky," Shitty says automatically. "Wait, what?"

"I would explain," Jack says, "But you're kind of - hitting me in the back of the head - "

"Oh!" Shitty says. "Ha. Forgot I was holding that. I mean, I am happy to see you, but that is a dildo in my hand, yes. I was going to show Lardo..."

"It's very solid," Jack says, starting to unwrap Shitty from his octopus hug. Shitty gets in a couple of kisses to his neck and then lets himself be detached.

"Ceramic!" Shitty says. "We didn't have one of those. And isn't it _cute_? It looks like something out of Dr. Seuss."

Jack tilts his head consideringly and blinks. "Aren't you not supposed to go to Mister Sister without Lardo any more?"

"Client on Thayer," Shitty says, "I was practically next door. And, come _on_ , Jack, would it kill you to say 'that's a very nice dildo' or something?"

"That's a very nice dildo," Jack repeats, deadpan, "Although I'm calling closed-doors on your erotic Dr. Seuss fantasies." He loses the straight face at the end and snorts.

"We're in Lardo's room," Shitty points out.

"Fair," Jack says. "I don't suppose you would know which drawer? Lardo said 'bottom left' but I don't know if they meant bottom _most_ left or - "

"I won't tell you what the dildo is for if you do tell me what the tubing is for," Shitty bargains.

Jack grins. "Puck slingshot," he says. "Robs bet Nez - "

"Oh god," Shitty interrupts.

"Right," Jack says. "Nez made a wide-gauge potato cannon over the weekend, 3 inch PVC so it can shoot a puck on top of the potato, except potatoes are too narrow so he's using watermelon chunks. The range is kind of weak though, and Robs said that our line could do better, so - "

"You're fucking kidding me," Shitty says. "Nez is firing a spud gun with his million-dollar fingers?"

Jack shrugs.

Shitty has to stop and just gaze at him. "Look at you," he says, beaming. "Look at you, all grown up and doing all the idiotic shit you never did in college." He pretends to wipe away a tear. "I'm so proud."

"You're saying I shouldn't encourage this."

"What? No! I'm saying I'm thrilled you have a playdate, kick their asses." Shitty steeples his fingers and contemplates the cabinet. "I think - here!" he says, yanking open a drawer on the middle right. There's a coil of sliced-open telephone wire and another coil of rubber tubing.

"Sweet," Jack says, picking it up.

"So, two nights?" Shitty says.

"Three," Jack says. "You know that."

"Yeah," Shitty says. "Goodbye kiss?"

"I did that last night," Jack says.

Shitty pouts. Jack swoops in and pecks him on the pout, then leans in more seriously to give a little gentle attention to his lower lip.

"Okay," Shitty says, pulling away, "Go win things, I have like ten more hours of lawyer today and your boyfriend will want me in bed by midnight."

" _Your_ boyfriend," Jack says, a running joke, and goes out the door smiling, stretching the rubber tubing in his hands.

Shitty crosses the room to the other cabinet, the glass-fronted display one where Lardo keeps their dildo collection. Njoy steel, NobEssence wood, lots and lots of hand-blown glass - it's fun to have a partner with a materials fetish and another one with a multimillion-dollar salary. The bloopy, stripey ceramic of the new one looks a little goofy in the middle of all that elegance, but that's okay. Even Jack is admitting these days that there's a place in life for the ridiculous.

Shitty bounces a few times, admiring his new toy, then goes off to write documents. But that's okay. It'll be much more fun to try out once he's not home alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is curious about the dildo, I'm picturing a [Ceramix No. 5](http://www.pipedreamproducts.com/showdetail-20k.php?Full_Number=PD4905-00).


	3. The Three-Year Penalty Kill, pt 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I know it's been awhile but I thought, hey, maybe there's someone out there who would enjoy a postcard from an old acquaintance today. This is for you if you're that person.

_summer 2015_

"I miiiiiiiss yoooooooou," Shitty says into the phone. "I wanna beeeeee there."

"I'm at woooooork," Lardo says.

"Why are you taaaaaalking to me if you're at wooooork," Shitty says.

"Nobody wants cooooooffee at eleven thiiiiiiirty," Lardo says.

"They might want dooooonuts," Shitty says. "Why are we taaaaaaalking like thiiiiiiiis."

"You staaaaaaarted it," Lardo says, and then, normally, "But seriously, I have to cancel for Saturday, I wasn't supposed to be on but now I am."

Shitty works every day to have the right amount of space in their togetherness; left to his own instincts, he'd be more like one of those invasive vine things than the oak or the cypress. But he is totally not strangling anybody.

"Okay," he says. "I mean, fuck capitalism, but so it goes."

"Rather fuck you," Lardo says, and, well, yes, Shitty would much rather do it with _his steady brofriend_ than a personification of an exploitative economic system, but "you're at work," he tells them. "I should probably not go into detail about how much I'd like that."

"Not with your hand in your pants," Lardo agrees.

"Fuck _you_ ," Shitty says, so appalled he sits up. "As if I'm wearing pants."

Lardo starts to laugh, and then the phone hangs up. Someone must have come in for donuts. Shitty flops back down, rolls over, and sighs. It's too late to call Jack, who's trying to, like, build up sleep along with weight; it wouldn't be too late to call Bitty, but he's at camp this week again.

A brofriend and two boyfriends - you wouldn't think Shitty would ever be lonely, but here he is. Greedy fucking clinging vine. The hardest part is that this is the halcyon summer _before_ it gets really hard.

He reminds himself, like he does every day, that he doesn't have to worry about the whole next three years right now: tonight he just has to do tonight. He sends a thing to their private chat about the world's oldest manatee, the kind of obviously-not-urgent thing that will make Jack and Bitty smile whenever they see it, and some separate thoughts just to Lardo about some of those details he hadn't gone into over the phone.

He misses all three of them, but they're his to miss; that's so much more than how it almost was.


	4. The Three-Year Penalty Kill, pt 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the plan is frequent-ish short updates, no idea how many. I know what happens but not how it breaks down into chapters, exactly? This is an experiment for me writing-wise as well as a chance to share some of these scenes I've had kicking around my head since Exeunt.
> 
> Content note for disapproving discussion of the concept of being "gold star gay".

_fall 2015_

Bitty's bed isn't any softer than Shitty's bed back in Harvard-land, and it isn't any warmer, now that Bitty isn't in it, but damn, Shitty just wants to stay in it all morning. (The sheets... might be fresher. Shitty can totally see Bitty changing them for his visit. He makes a mental note to do that before Lardo comes up, seems like a nice idea.) There are good things waiting outside the bed - Bitty in the kitchen, Lardo maybe too, by now, and then walking Lardo back to their dorm after breakfast - but Shitty is still basking in having been cuddled all night.

Maybe if he just stays here, Lardo will come up?

But no, he knows where he would want that to go, and they haven't, like, checked in with Bitty about using his bed, so no. Besides which Lardo is probably stuffing their face with Bitty breakfast goods.

Shitty rolls reluctantly out of bed, identifies his boxers as appropriate breakfast attire, and slumps down the stairs. He smells bacon at the same time as he hears Holster's voice.

"So, look, Bitty..." Holster starts. He sounds uncomfortable, and Shitty automatically slows down to listen. "I have to ask, what are you doing with Shitty?"

"Doing?" Bitty says, kind of high-pitched. Shitty could go rescue him but he's also kind of curious what Bitty is going to say. (He's also wondering where Lardo is, since this doesn't sound like a conversation Holster would start in front of them.)

"Shitty's had a thing for Lardo forever," Ransom puts in. "Not really bros to come between them now that there's finally something going on there."

"Not trying to come between them!" Bitty says, very fast.

"Bro, you were literally between them for half of last night," Holster says. "Or all over Shitty when he was dancing with Lardo."

Shitty grins... ah, good memories. Grinding up on Bitty, with Lardo smirking at both of them... Bitty somehow conveying enough rhythm to keep all three of them moving in time... the enormously smug feeling of having his hands on the two hottest people in the room. Of course Bitty had ended up between them half the time, Lardo didn't like feeling boxed in, Shitty did, and Bitty just liked dancing in whatever arrangement.

"It's not like that," Bitty says.

"Wait," Holster says. "Are you going after _Lardo_? Because we thought you were, like, gold star gay."

"Bro," Ransom says, "wait though, is the star for only ever being into dudes, or for never being into ladies?"

"There's no star," Bitty says, crossly but quietly, but Ransom is still going on.

"This is a good question, I never thought about this, if you're gay, like, what does that mean about nonbinary - "

Shitty has left Bitty out to dry long enough.

"Good morning good morning!" he says, sweeping into the room. Bitty is standing at the stove with a spatula and a peeved expression, which relaxes when he sees Shitty. Shitty is more than happy to be the cavalry here.

"Shitty!" Ransom says, clearly also seeing him as a useful authority. "I was just asking, if you're gold star gay, does that - "

"I'm bi," Shitty says, deliberately misinterpreting. "Also stars are gross, like all purity measurements."

He pulls off a smooth little move, putting a hand on Bitty's shoulder and leaning in to kiss his ear while snagging a strip of bacon off the plate on the counter with the other hand. The bacon turns out to be Very Hot but regrets are for chumps, so he stuffs it into his mouth despite the pain and grins triumphantly at Ransom and Holster.

"Don't think I didn't see that," Bitty says. He's shooting Shitty what might be a Meaningful Questioning Look or might just be disapproval of bacon-snatching. Shitty's going to have to remind Bitty he's not very fluent in Looks.

"Wait," Holster says. "Since when are you bi? Also, what?" He looks back and forth between Bitty and Shitty.

Where the heck is Lardo? They'd decided to go back to their dorm rather than crash on Bitty's floor last night. Maybe they're sleeping in? It would be sort of nice to have them here for this conversation.

"In the longstanding tradition of taking a road trip to find yourself," Shitty starts, drawing himself up to oratory posture, "I went out there... in search of experience. To taste and touch and feel as much as a man can, before he repents."

Bitty is snickering; Holster and Ransom look mystified, evidently not as familiar with Johnny Cash or early-90s U2 as people who have shared a car with Jack Zimmermann for days on end.

"And there, like lovers and heroes, and the restless part of everyone," Shitty goes on, switching songs, not really sure where he's going with this - 

"Waaaait," Ransom cuts in. "Are you saying you guys _all_ hooked up on your road trip? Like a road trip _orgy_?"

"Not Jack," Bitty says very quickly. "But I guess we're... it wasn't an _orgy_ , good lord, but I guess we're..."

He looks at Shitty, and Shitty nods encouragingly.

They've talked about this a lot, all of them. Bitty wants to get to tell people _something_ , that he's in a relationship, that he's happy. Lardo knows that what Shitty not-so-secretly wants is PDA; Shitty wants Bitty to be happy and Lardo to not get too fed up with his vine-like tendencies. Jack wants to come visit during the All-Star break and not have anyone speculate that it's a booty call. They've all agreed that their best bet is to not try to hide the non-Jack parts of the relationship, and let that, in Shitty's words, provide obfuscatory cover.

"We're trying something out," Bitty says, and, okay, it's not quite the banner-waving "Shitty is my boyfriend!" that Shitty might have slightly been hoping for, but it's a good start. He goes in for the cheek kiss and Bitty expertly slides the bacon plate away.

"Whoa," Holster says, and that's when Lardo rolls in, a coffee in each hand.

"I get half of each of these," they say, and then, when Ransom snickers, "what?"


	5. The Three-Year Penalty Kill, pt 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone reading and enjoying! I will try to catch up on comment replies soon!
> 
> Content note for a second-hand description of a coming out scene. Also I speak zero Vietnamese but there were a couple of words here that I don't think Lardo would say in translation to English. Please let me know if I got them wrong.

_fall 2015_

"It was epic," Lardo says. They're sitting cross-legged on Shitty's bed in the Harvard Law dorm where he warehouses his body during the few hours they let him sleep, tossing a hacky sack from hand to hand. "If I had thought about it, I would have tried my mother alone. But I think this actually worked out better."

Shitty is working hard on being a good listener, so he is not touching Lardo, although he wants to be, and he is not asking questions because sometimes people don't want to be cross-examined when they're trying to have a conversation, Shitty. "Yeah?"

"So I told them I've been using 'they' at school, and that I felt more like myself, and I wanted them to know," Lardo says. "Not even asking them to use it. But my dad starts freaking out, like, are you saying you're not my daughter. And I think it's going to get - bad. But then my grandmother stands up and goes on this absolute tear about how she lost everyone in the war and family is all that matters and she doesn't care if I'm a girl or a boy or a dragon, doesn't my father know about the risks for young people whose families reject them, and on and on. Honestly I couldn't even follow some of it, my Tiếng Việt is rusty, but by the end everybody was crying and for the rest of the night my parents were very carefully trying to phrase everything without pronouns. Of course that means they were calling me Larissa all the time, but it seems like a start?"

"That's swawesome," Shitty says. He can probably get one question here. "Do you really think she'd be okay with you being a dragon?"

"What, like if I seriously said I thought of myself as a dragon?" Lardo snorts. "No. But I guess maybe she knew someone who passed during the war? So she gets that people might have practical reasons to live as whatever - actually for all I know she thinks I have practical reasons too."

Shitty feels like it's sufficiently practical to just not want people misgendering you all the time, but this is Lardo's rant, and if he starts his own rant he's probably getting the hacky sack thrown at him. It's happened before.

"Go Grandma Duan," he says.

"Bà," Lardo says.

"Ba?" Shitty echoes.

"You're not going to meet her _soon_ ," Lardo says. "If I introduce them to a boyfriend now they'll be like, 'oh, she got over it, the queer thing too'. But, I don't know, eventually."

"Me and Bitty as the gay roommates?" Shitty suggests.

Lardo frowns. "You're not just Bitty's," they say, "and also it would be nice if they got that I was not looking to be introduced to anyone's nephew or whatever, which - "

But Shitty is lost in a sort of rapt full-body shiver of happiness, Lardo is rarely possessive but it's just about his favorite thing, and - 

the hacky sack hits him in the face.

"Yo," Lardo says.

"Touching now?" Shitty asks.

"Sur-" Lardo starts, and he tackles them to the bed. The next little while features more of his favorite things - naked Lardo, Lardo putting him where they want him, orgasms for everyone - until he's got Lardo lying on his chest so he can pet the two sides of their hair, the side they're keeping buzzed and the side they're letting grow in.

"Any more thoughts about trying to change your name in time for your diploma?" Shitty asks.

"I don't know," Lardo sighs. "Nothing seems right. 'Lar' is such a part of my name in 'Lardo', but what even starts with Lar. Lark? Larry? Totally different sound."

"Larboard," Shitty says. "No, I know, Larva!"

"Larva," Lardo giggles, "Oh, yeah, that's great, that's definitely it. I'm not a performance artist, yeesh."

"Larrrrr," Shitty tries to think. "LARPer. Lars?"

"'Lars Duan' sounds awful," Lardo says. "Oh, but wait, we could match! Larnabas!"

" _No_ ," Shitty says, aghast, and then, backpedalling, "I mean, it is your name, and - "

"Oh god I'm not serious," Lardo says. "Larnabas and Barnabas sounds like a circus act. I've tried to think a little further afield - Lane? Lorne? An? Lành? Lan? I think I'm just doomed to be a not-girl Larissa."

"If you don't want my first name, you could take Jack's middle and be Laurent," Shitty suggests.

"And then I will be Lordo," Lardo says. "Ruler of all!" They roll off of Shitty and start retrieving clothes from where they got tossed.

"You can't stay?" Shitty asks.

"Told the parents I was meeting a friend, but they expect me home for the night when I'm home for break," Lardo says.

"Alas," Shitty sighs. "I mean, in fact I have I-don't-want-to-say-how-many pages of reading still to do tonight, but this was nice."

"'Nice'", Lardo says with an eyebrow waggle, as they pull up their pants. "One word for it."

"I love you," Shitty says. "And I'm really glad it went okay. With your family."

"Me too," Lardo says. "Both."


	6. The Three-Year Penalty Kill, pt 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! This bit turned out neither frequent nor short, I guess it's more of a letter than a postcard. Also I've gone ahead and bumped the rating up to match the rating on Exeunt but I don't think the content here is actually more mature than anything else so far. Content notes for another second-hand coming out scene and some relationship miscommunication.

_Christmas 2015_

"Could you hand me that dough ornament next, Buzz?" Mrs. Bittle asks from her perch on the stepstool. "Now we did these the year Dicky was five - he felt so betrayed over dough he couldn't eat. There's another set from later on, he made the cutest little pie with the teensiest lattice - "

Bitty, on the other side of the tree, mouths "sorry" at Shitty. Shitty grins back: is he kidding? This is great! 

*

Shitty ends up in Madison for Christmas like this: he has a quarrel over Thanksgiving with his grandparents about his hair, which he still hasn't cut. It's not even actual Thanksgiving, he spends that with his mom (and not at the Haus, alas), but he's summoned to the paternal halls the Saturday after and fails to come up with a plausible excuse to avoid it, and it gets ugly. Around the same time, Bitty comes out to his mother over Skype, emboldened by Lardo's success, Shitty's encouragement, and maybe, Shitty thinks, some degree of pent-up frustration over missing Jack, like if he can't be doing all the gay things he wants, at least he can be himself openly? Does it work like that? No, probably not, but, anyways, one day Bitty is telling them that he's seriously thinking about it and the next day he's texting to Shitty that his mother!!!! told him she's so proud of him!!!! with happy-crying kaomoji faces. At least Shitty thinks they're happy-crying, and Bitty, himself, is happy-crying when Shitty takes a frantic Lyft down there for congratulatory snuggles.

"So did she ask if you were seeing anyone?" Shitty asks, once Bitty's retelling slows down a little. Lardo, who's been holding Bitty's hand, looks at him over Bitty's head with raised eyebrows.

Bitty puts his other hand to his face. "She did," he says, "And, oh lord, I told her I was, although I didn't say anything about who. Coach was quick enough to tell her not to press for details."

Shitty frowns. "Like he doesn't want to hear - "

"I think maybe he meant it more like I was obviously fixing to cry any time and he wanted to spare me the third degree? But I'll have to tell them something, although," he looks between Shitty and Lardo, "I confess I'm not entirely sure what exactly."

"Dibs," Shitty says, and the rest of it follows from there. Shitty, okay, yes, does want an excuse to skip out on dad-side Christmas, which promises to be more of the same quarrel, but more than that, this is clearly the time to show up for Bitty, who is navigating a major new chapter of the parental relationship and deserves someone on-site who has his back. Shitty is pretty aware he's a consolation prize, like, Bitty had almost certainly dreamed about Jack in the introducing-the-boyfriend role, not him, but here it is Shitty's shift to take and he's just going to have to do as good a job he can on Jack's behalf. Lardo manages to be in the room, out of sight of the screen, when Bitty informs his parents that the person he's seeing is in fact "Mr. Crappy", and is clearly amused to report to Shitty that their reaction was first surprise and then a sort of dawning, "oh, is that why he was always around without clothes on".

"It was _not_!" Shitty says, indignant, but who even knows. It's not a sex thing, but maybe it's an intimacy thing, he's trying to be more aware about this stuff. Anyways, awkwardness of wait-that-was-our-son's- _boyfriend's_ -rear-exposure-that-walked-past-on-Skype-that-time aside, the Bittles are keen to welcome Shitty for Christmas, and Bitty says he'd rather get it over with than wait and worry about it, so Shitty books a flight and freaks out to Lardo over the appropriate price range for a bottle of wine for a hostess gift to one's boyfriend's mother.

"And also a Christmas gift, aaaagh," he says. "They're foodies, do they not want regional foods? Is it insulting to bring jam to someone who makes jam?"

"Stonewall Kitchen mustard," Lardo says, which seems reasonable. Shitty acquires a whole assortment of stuff at Whole Foods and then triple-bags it all in his suitcase because he's pretty sure giant mustard stains on all his nice shirts is not going to help the I-am-a-worthy-partner-for-your-son cause.

*

He's not even there yet when they hit a snag: "I just can't refer to my son's beau as 'Mr. Crappy'," Mrs. Bittle says over Skype. (Shitty really should be in the law library, but he's not, what can he say.) "I want to tell everyone you're coming for Christmas, but I need something I can call you, honey, and Dicky just keeps saying he doesn't feel like it's his place to share a name you don't like, but I told him, you must be something else at school, I'm sure they don't call you that at Harvard - "

Shitty smiles weakly. He is, in fact, Shitty at Harvard, to his classmates and fellow Law dorm residents; Mr. Knight in the classroom. But he can see that there's a bullet to be bit here. "Barnabas, ma'am," he says. "I was Barney until Samwell."

Bitty's eyes go wide, like he actually hadn't known that, or hadn't expected Shitty to admit it.

"Oh!" Mrs. Bittle says. "Barnabas, well, that's classic, how nice. Is it a family name?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Shitty says. Mrs. Bittle makes a mom face.

"Lots of boys down here don't go by what they're christened," she says. "Maybe we can find you a nicer nickname."

"A Southern nickname!" Shitty says. A glorious future briefly opens up in which he gets to be "Bubba" or "Buster" to the Bittle clan - but, no, it's got to be Bubba, he's already got the Bs right there in Barnabas - until Bitty pokes him like he can tell what he's thinking. It's Coach who eventually comes up with Buzz, which is a little on the nose for some of Shitty's less-favorite things about his brain, but does, by the same token, have the ring of verisimilitude.

*

Once he's there, though, everything goes swimmingly. He gets to see Bitty's old room, and browse his old books and riffle through his comics, and Mrs. Bittle breaks out the figure skating scrapbooks, and there's a metric fuckton of delicious food, and the Bittles seem - fine? - when he puts his arm over Bitty's shoulders, or holds his hand for the entire second half of "It's a Wonderful Life". Shitty washes dishes and keeps his pants on all day and praises Bitty's hockey and answers questions about law school and it all seems - good? Really good? You wouldn't get recruited for tree decorating if your boyfriend's mother didn't trust you with the breakables, right? Mrs. Bittle seems pleased with the Stonewall Kitchen stuff, and Bitty's eyes light up over the gift certificate for indoor skydiving. (He's pretty proud of himself for that one.) Bitty gives him pie for a year, a little homemade booklet of gift certificates for different kinds of pie and some fill-in-the-blanks, which he probably would have gotten anyways but now he doesn't have to feel bad making specific requests, score. A small box from the Bittles turns out to be a coiled black belt.

"That'll keep your pants up," Coach tells him, cracking himself up. Mrs. Bittle smacks his arm and asks him what happened to the scarf idea, but Shitty loves it and waves off her apologies. A joke gift, warmly meant (and he can tell that it was) is a thousand times better than all the expensive cold bullshit he's had to open from his dad's family. This is the best Christmas he's had in years, really. Even Bitty's grandmother eyeing him and pronouncing him "not what she would have expected" when she arrives with a pack of aunts and cousins can't bring him down. 

(But what does that mean. Is he dressed improperly?)

Dinner has a lot of dishes and a lot of toasts and by the time Shitty puts the last piece of the good china in the drying rack, he's pretty exhausted. Bitty is already curled up on the living room sofa, staring at the shifting colors of the lights on the Christmas tree.

"Oh my god," Shitty says, and flops onto the sofa, so that his head ends up in Bitty's lap. "That was a lot of Christmas."

"Yeah," Bitty says quietly. "A lot."

Shitty looks up at him. It's kind of hard to tell from underneath, and in the dim, multicolored light, but he doesn't think that's a happy face.

"Did someone say something?" he asks. He had kind of forgotten to keep worrying about it, which, ugh, way to be privileged, Shitty.

"No," Bitty says. "Everyone was fine." He shrugs and drops a hand into Shitty's hair; Shitty wriggles happily when he starts petting. "It's just, I guess - that makes me feel bad. That they're all being nice, and I'm lying to them."

Shitty sits up. "Lying?"

"'Yes, this is my boyfriend, Buzz,'" Bitty says, making a little ta-da gesture. "Definitely the man I am dating! He sure is definitely not doing me a favor coming down here - "

"Bits," Shitty says, catching his hands, trying to steady himself against the lurch he just felt. "Wait wait wait. A favor, what - I don't feel like I'm lying, do you feel like we're lying?"

"Telling my parents we're a couple?" Bitty says. "I keep telling myself, at least I don't have to worry what happens when I spill the gay beans, but I feel like I just traded one wrong assumption for another."

"Oh," Shitty says. "Oh, shit."

He drops Bitty's hands, dimly aware he's running his hands through his hair while he tries to think what to say.

"Ok, look," he says finally. "For me, I haven't been _pretending_ to be your boyfriend, I've been _enjoying_ being your boyfriend, except I apparently suck at the part where I listen to you and support you. So I'm sorry about that. And if you would have rather done something other than me coming down here at all."

"Oh, honey," Bitty says, and then he has Bitty's arms around him, which probably means he's doing the thing again, the making-things-about-him thing, but is too nice to turn down. Bitty sighs against him.

"It's not fair to you to keep wishing you were Jack," Bitty says. "I _am_ glad you came down here. But, I don't know, when it's you and me and Lardo up there, that makes more sense. The two of us down here, it's weirder."

Weird seems better than lying, Shitty'll take it. "Maybe it's like a special teams thing," he suggests, snuggling further into Bitty. "We've been practicing playing short-handed, but being down another person is a whole different situation."

Bitty giggles.

"Should I be sneaking into your room more? Sucking up to your parents less? I could suck your dick?"

Bitty makes a strangled noise, and when Shitty twists to look at him, he's turning bright red. Unless that's the Christmas lights.

"Sweet mother of..." he coughs out. "Oh my lord, you can not just say things like that. What?"

"Just a thought," Shitty says. "If that's why this feels fake. No pressure obviously." Maybe he should have thought this through more, but too late now. "I mean, I don't think it has to make a difference, but - "

"Umm," Bitty says, kind of loudly, in the tone of voice that obviously means 'objection, your honor.'

"Do you think your parents have sex?" Shitty argues, trying to keep his voice down. Bitty makes an appalled face. "Or, like, Jack's parents," Shitty says quickly.

Bitty keeps making the face. "I don't know?"

"Right," Shitty says. "It doesn't matter, you would never say Jack's parents are lying about being married... you're still frowning."

"You don't even do that," Bitty whisper-hisses. "And don't you dare tell me that Shitty doesn't but Buzz does, or something."

"Hey," Shitty says, wiggling more so he can get his arms around Bitty. "I would never fake anything with you." He looks down at his dress shirt. "Take me to the guest room and I'll take the meet-the-parents costume off _right now_."

"Quit dodging," Bitty says, giving him a no-bullshit-now look worthy of Lardo. Right.

"So I like sucking Lardo's dick," Shitty starts. "Which is admittedly different, and I don't know if I'd be any good at it with, you know, bio dick, and I wouldn't want to suck a stranger's dick, but, I don't know, it might be... nice. Close."

"I see," Bitty says, and they're apparently back in the pinker part of the Christmas light cycle. It's making Bitty's eyes look darker than usual, too.

Then Bitty blinks and shakes his head.

"I'll tell you what," he says, "Let me brush my teeth and then I will come down to the guest room. But everyone is keeping their pajamas on, okay?"

Shitty actually has pajamas, in case the Bittles had turned out to be a presents-in-pajamas family instead of a dress-before-breakfast family, although this will be the first time they leave his suitcase. "Sure?"

In the end, no one gets their dick sucked, and there isn't even any Christmas kissing under the mistletoe (there wasn't any, Shitty looked), but Christmas at the Bittles' ends with Bitty in Shitty's bed, falling asleep holding his hand, and it feels like the kind of relationship milestone Shitty had thought it was the whole time.


	7. The Three-Year Penalty Kill, pt 5

_early 2016_

"You are fucking kidding me," Lardo says, and that's how Shitty knows this is, in fact, a legitimate crisis, that Lardo is showing that they're upset. Because he's obviously going to be loud and denounce-y about it, and Bitty is slumped in a sort of heap of sexually-frustrated despair, but Lardo usually tries to dial down the drama instead of up.

"It's supposed to be an honor," Jack says onscreen. He looks really tired. "I'm sorry, guys."

It is an honor, Jack getting sent to the All-Star Game, and on some level Shitty even knows that; when he has to go be thrilled with Ransom and Holster and whoever, he won't be faking. But - 

"I miss you and it's been forever," Lardo says. "Also I'm gonna be stuck with the Boyfriends of Woe here when you don't visit." Well. That's fair.

"Hey," Jack says, looking from side to side pointedly, although of course it doesn't really connect over skype. "No woe at Lardo, eh?"

Bitty forces a smile. Shitty kind of wants to salute and kind of wants to flip Jack off and ends up making a sort of indeterminate waving motion.

"I bet you'll have fun hanging out with everyone," Bitty starts, bravely, and Lardo cuts him off.

"No. Look, I'm sorry, the woe was a sidetrack. Obviously we're disappointed. But what about you, are trying to tell me you weren't counting down to this just as much as we were?"

"I'm - " Jack starts, and Lardo interrupts again.

"No bullshit," they say. "And no 'we'll talk at the All-Star break', because that obviously isn't happening."

"It's - " Jack starts again, and Lardo points threateningly right into the camera.

"I will send you a mixtape of nothing but 'Level Up'," they say, trying to keep a straight face. "I will rickroll you daily with it, I'll - "

Jack finally cracks a smile. "Stop before you get to the boombox," he says. And then he sighs, enormously, until he's almost as slumped as Bitty.

"I was counting down to it," he says. "Maybe even more than you were."

Bitty and Lardo exchange this look, like they don't know about _that_ , but Shitty can believe it. Jack leaves his phone off most of the day, he won't Skype on the road, he won't even let Bitty and Lardo send _packages_. He's got to be lonelier than the rest of them, and maybe it's horrible, but Shitty thinks it's about time that Jack admits that.

"So I think I've been doing this all wrong," Jack goes on, sounding tired and miserable, but totally echoing Shitty's thoughts. "O'Day keeps asking if I'm doing okay, and I don't want to say that I hate living in his basement, but... I hate living in his basement. I thought it wouldn't matter, because I couldn't see you guys during the season anyways... but I want to visit you and have you visit me and I don't know how to _do_ that living in my captain's mother-in-law suite."

"Oh, honey," Bitty says. Shitty is righteously irate that the possibly-ableist-bullshit of Jack getting asked to live in O'Day's house in the first place has the nerve to now interfere with Jack warming up to the idea of a more active long-distance relationship - it's not easy for Jack to take things out of the "can't even think about this" box in his head. This isn't the right time to yell about it, though, when Jack is trying to talk to them. 

Lardo just says "So what can we do?" and that makes Jack smile again, weak but there. God damn Shitty misses that sonofabitch. 

"I know I said no packages, but - " 

Bitty actually leaps to his feet, like he's going to tear down to the kitchen and start cooking right that minute. 

"I have been prioritizing recipes for the day you would say that, Jack Zimmermann - " 

"Wait, wait," Jack says, but he's smiling even more now. "Stay and talk to me while I can." 

Shitty reminds himself all the time not to push Jack, that he wants to be something easy rather than another thing trying to overwhelm him. But right now, when he's reconsidering his own rules, seems like too good a window to pass up. 

"So wait," Shitty says. "Could we just make visiting happen by doing it? Like what if we all came down right now, like to celebrate your All-Star selection? That would be a good reason..." 

Jack and Lardo are both shaking their heads before he even finishes. There's always a game, or a flight, or a practice, or a class; Shitty himself is supposed to be heading back to Cambridge in, like, fifteen minutes, sayeth his reading schedule. Shitty knows there have been a couple of Jack-and-Bitty hotel assignations despite all this - ah, the sweet romance of Mansfield, MA - but Bitty's stopped asking for another one because it was making Jack sad to keep saying no. He's looking sad again now, in fact. Dammit, Shitty. 

"Packages are good," Shitty concedes. 

"Hey," Jack says. "I'm going to make it to Lardo's senior show. I promise. It's between home games - " 

"And weeks and weeks away," Bitty says mournfully, and then catches himself. "But that'll be great, Jack!" 

"I'm not missing that," Jack says again, and Lardo grabs onto Bitty and Shitty's hands, gripping hard, like they can cement that into being true just by holding tight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels weird to be writing about this Jack agreeing to let Bitty and Lardo send him packages while canon Jack is taking Bitty to the Falcs family skate - I almost posted this chapter the day after that update came out but the contrast was too jarring. I love canon but this Jack means a lot to me too - so much more unsure of what he can handle, of what might happen, slower to warm up and less flexible and sometimes stuck on arbitrary limits or worries that don't make sense to the people close to him... I guess I gave him a lot of my own personality :/. So I hope people don't mind being a little patient with this Jack. I'm thinking one more part of 3yrPK and then a time jump to a post-canon timeframe, so it should stop feeling so weird.


	8. The Three-Year Penalty Kill, pt 6

_spring 2016_

_Portrait of My Grandmother, Larissa Duan_  
_stiffened garments over wire armature, nón lá hats, chain-link fencing_

_Two traditional Vietnamese áo bà ba are positioned as though the wearers are crouching with their hands raised to support someone; an áo dài is positioned as the third figure, climbing with their assistance over a section of chain-link fence. Both áo bà ba are stained and damaged._

Lardo's got a couple of paintings on display, but their big sculptural piece is getting all the attention. Like, seriously: Shitty watched people coming in until he'd counted ten people and eight of them went right to Lardo's thing first. It's a stunning work. Shitty knows he's biased but, on the other hand, he saw it a bunch of times in progress which could have diluted the final impact, but didn't? Like, the illusion that the clothes are just floating there, or being worn by someone invisible: Shitty knows just how much work went into disguising the structural stuff that holds it all up, and how many hours Lardo spent trying different starches and glues to shape the fabric. He actually consulted on the placement of the "bullet holes" in the left figure. They still give him a jolt every time he notices again that they're there.

Lardo themself is in hot demand by an endless stream of professors and deans and whatnot who want to ask questions about the piece; it's pretty much all there in their artist statement, but it's the performance side of the job, Shitty gets that. He's having fun lurking while Lardo is the center of attention; it's a reversal of the typical dynamic, and it's fun to see them "on".

The only fly in all this juicy ointment is that Jack isn't here yet, but even that doesn't have Shitty worried - he saw Bitty check his phone and then slip out a few minutes ago, Shitty would bet dollars to donuts that they're saying a private hello before Lardo becomes the center of Jack's attention. In fact, really, if Shitty thinks about it, Jack and Bitty in a bathroom somewhere, Bitty's hands under the inevitable suit jacket and Jack's hands on Bitty's face, it's not so much a fly in the ointment as the cherry on the sundae. Jack will come in first - Shitty makes a little bet with himself - is it too much to hope that Jack's lips will still be red?

Jack's lips don't really look different, but he's totally flushed on the back of his neck, so Shitty counts that as a win. He gives Shitty a little wave and then goes to stand politely at the back of the people around Lardo.

Shitty's pretty fond of making Lardo smile - it's like a point on the scoreboard of life - but getting to watch their smile when they catch sight of Jack is great even without personally having had anything to do with it. Bitty slips in a moment later, and Bitty's lips _are_ red. It's beautiful. He comes over to stand next to Shitty, out of the way, and Shitty grins at him.

"Look who you found!" Shitty whispers. "Huzzah!" He puts out his hand for a fist bump. Bitty dutifully knocks his knuckles against Shitty's, and then surprises him by interlacing their fingers. Ever since Christmas he's been reaching out more, initiating more contact, and Shitty loves it. Shitty squeezes Bitty's fingertips, and for a moment they just stand there together, watching Lardo talk and Jack listen attentively. When Shitty looks over again at Bitty, he's making the same satisfied little smile that Shitty can feel on his own face, like, look at our people, are they not excellent. Bitty doesn't even drop Shitty's hand as Ransom and Holster approach, which he's still sometimes skittish about.

"That thing is awesome," Ransom says, obviously meaning Lardo's sculpture. "Best thing in the whole show. Is she pregnant?"

It takes a lot to shut Shitty up, he'd be the first to admit that, but for a second all he can do is gape. "What... you mean Lardo??" Bitty is sputtering next to him.

"Not _Lardo_ ," Ransom says, "Yeesh. In the _sculpture_ , the climbing one in the dress thing, is there maybe a little belly there? I wouldn't ask about a real person but the sculpture isn't going to care."

"Oh," Shitty says, recovering. "Read thou the artist's statement already, quit freaking out Bitty." He tows Bitty by their still-linked hands further along the wall.

"I wouldn't have messed up their pronouns..." Ransom says plaintively after them, but Holster puts further conversation to an end by steering Ransom back towards the open bar. A-bro-gates it, ha! Bitty looks too flustered to appreciate this pun, though, and so Shitty just squeezes his fingers again.

"Shitty," Bitty hisses. "Please do not make it sound like Lardo fallin' pregnant would be _my_ crisis in particular?"

Shitty reviews quickly. Huh. "I didn't mean to imply that," he says. "Although - " and then he stops; there's a complex tangle of ideas here, about what Ransom and Holster probably already assume, about what makes a useful cover story, etc etc, and none of it particularly needs to be dug into tonight. "Sorry," Shitty says, and Bitty snuggles a little closer while they wait out the rest of the show.

*

"Hell fuckin' yes!" Shitty says, as they spill into the house, turning on lights and, in Shitty's case, stripping out of his suit. He's technically been here before when he got the keys in the morning - the house is an airbnb find, near Samwell and conveniently private - but it looks different late at night with Jack shrugging out of his suit coat and Lardo flopping happily onto the big sectional couch.

"I think I'm going to do it," Lardo says, staring up at the ceiling. "That gallery owner, who wants me to try to develop the fabric thing into something that could go in a wall case? It might be bullshit, but she sounded sincere in thinking _Grandma_ would get people in the door but something wall-friendly would sell. Gives me a next project anyways."

"That's great!" Bitty burbles, pulling Tupperware out of his overnight bag and popping lids. Shitty ate like half of a Samwell Ubiquitous Cheese Platter over the course of the show but he's not saying no to mini pies.

"Ooh, maple berry?" Lardo says. "Gimme," and Shitty is entertained to watch Jack and Bitty both fall over themselves to deliver a mini pie into the hands of the hero of the hour.

Lardo sits up, looking a little bemused to now have a mini pie in each hand, and nowhere to set them down.

"Shitty," they ask, "Come take off my shoes?" and, hey, Shitty can get into that, for sure.

"As the maestro commands," he says, sweeping into a sort of kneeling dramatic bow and trying to figure out what the heck Lardo has done with their laces. "Maestro? Is that just music? What do you call, like, a famous artist."

"Lardo," Bitty giggles, and then eeps when Jack grabs him from behind and pulls him into his lap on the couch. "Oh, hi."

"Hi," Jack says, warm and intent, nuzzling into Bitty's hair. Shitty gets Lardo's shoes off and then settles back onto the couch between them all, sensibly retrieving the boxes of mini pies first and putting them on the coffee table within reach.

"Strawberry maple and strawberry walnut," Bitty says, pointing and taking one. "They weren't the _best_ strawberries but I think they baked up nice."

"Very nice," Jack says, despite now being the only person not eating one. Bitty holds up his over his shoulder for Jack to take a bite. "Mm, like I said."

"So Lardo," Shitty says, mouth full of happiness, "What kind of workspace are you going to want for doing more fabric pieces? I know there's, like, waiting lists at a lot of the studio buildings." He's looked. Lardo hadn't wanted to talk post-graduation plans in the thick of senior show prep, but Shitty can't help but think about it.

Lardo exchanges a look with Jack.

"Well, actually," they say slowly, "Jack and I have been talking about getting an apartment next year. Since he wants to move out of O'Day's, and wouldn't be coming back to an empty apartment all the time, and if we're going to end up down in Providence eventually, I'd maybe rather - "

"Oh," Shitty says. "That's good, that makes sense, okay." He had maybe been assuming that _he_ was going to get Lardo live-in companionship, but it's totally true that he gets out of Cambridge more often than Jack gets out of Providence (recreationally, anyways, away games obviously don't count).

"Dibs on Bitty next year then," Shitty says, cheerfully rearranging the plan. "It's like a draft, you get one, I get one! And then I'm finally done and - what?"

Jack and Lardo and Bitty are all exchanging more looks around his head.

"So!" Bitty says. "Iiiii... am actually not graduating! I mean, I am, but I figured out that with my courses so far, if I change direction a little and do an extra year, I can do an ed degree and my teaching certificate, and... actually have a career plan?"

Shitty blinks. "But you can't play a fifth year."

"Yeah, I might actually get my course work done," Bitty says a little ruefully. "There's some good loan programs for teachers, my parents think we can pull it off."

Shitty can't help but hear the way Jack and Lardo aren't saying "oh hey, that's great", the way they're sort of nodding along with Bitty.

"Have - have you guys all been talking about this?" Shitty asks. "Were you... not telling me?"

He would be an enormous jackass to object to Bitty (finally!) having some kind of career plan - obviously he isn't going to tell Bitty to cut his education short so he can come live with Shitty and make him law-school-nourishing snacks - but Shitty still feels a little shaken. He has to drop a hand to his middle to make sure Lardo hasn't, like, secretly hollowed him out and replaced him with a wire armature, although he's not wearing a shirt, so there's no fabric to stiffen. He doesn't _really_ think they made a coordinated "avoid Shitty" plan, but...

"Hey," Jack says, scooping Shitty into his lap. Bitty's already there, so it's instantly awkward - too many elbows, and Shitty is tilted at an uncomfortable and unsustainable angle - but then Lardo scoots in and props him up, and Bitty settles his arm around his shoulders, and then he's stable, and actually really cozy, being held by all three of them at once. His brain can't keep winding itself up under such a wave of "hey we're good" messages from his body, and it's only a moment before he feels warm and solid again.

"This is all recent," Jack says reassuringly.

"It is!" Bitty chimes in. "Like Lardo and I only just realized me staying at Samwell and them going to Providence sort of left you out, and then we wanted to wait to talk about it in person, when we were all going to be together."

"In person we can do _this_ ," Jack says, sort of unnecessarily because here they are, except that Shitty is totally the guy who is extra touched that at least one of them thought about this in advance and this is not just reassurance cuddling but deliberately planned reassurance cuddling.

"Okay, this is the hardest part," Lardo says, and Shitty rearranges himself a little to look at them more squarely. "There is - I am more nervous about living with you than living with Jack. Going straight from the dorm to just the two of us - with you having this big important law school thing and me probably back with the donuts - I love Jack, but it's... simpler - "

Lardo is clearly worried about how Shitty is going to take this, but he really actually doesn't feel upset, and not in a "shouldn't but actually does" way. Maybe it's Jack and Bitty literally supporting him behind him, or just that space for Lardo to develop their relationship in a way that works for them is obviously something Shitty wants, even at the expense of other things Shitty also wants.

"Hey," he says. "I appreciate you sharing that boundary! I am glad!" He doesn't have the leverage to use Jack's scoop maneuver, but he sort of pulls on Lardo until they're more like on top of the cuddle pile than buttressing it. "Seriously, preemptively identifying a problem situation and then... not being in it? That's a solid move."

"Yeah?" Lardo says, still sounding unsure, and Shitty nods.

"Oh, also, Bitty, congrats on the career plan," Shitty says over his shoulder. "I should have said right away. I want to hear more about this."

"Definitely!" Bitty says. "So, I started looking at my courses, although it really started with this conversation I had with - "

"Um," Jack interrupts. "If we're past the hard part, could we maybe - uh - "

Jack is very strong, but Shitty supposes it's fair if there are limits to how long he's comfortable with three people piled on top of him. They rearrange into a more linear configuration, which is also good for everyone grabbing more mini pies. Bitty launches back into the epic tale of self-discovery that has drawn him to conclude he wants to stand in a classroom and talk to young people for the rest of his life. Lardo looks exhausted, but in no hurry to leave for bed; Jack looks even more exhausted, but he's paying careful attention to Bitty's story.

Two more stupid years until they can own this life instead of renting it for the night. But there will be more nights like this. There'll even be more to _this_ night, whenever Bitty and Jack go off to finish up what they'd started earlier. There is happy-congratulations-on-killing-your-senior-show sex at, like, a 90% probability, with an additional chance of added maybe-the-walls-are-thin-and-we'll-hear-Jack-and-Bitty. He can feel it on his face, the same smug smile from the art gallery: he's so lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for The Three-Year Penalty Kill! Next time on Postcards, a time jump to the summer of 2018, unless I decide to write something else first.
> 
> I know nothing about Vietnamese clothing traditions except for some internet research, so I apologize for anything I got wrong there.


End file.
